@thehouseofthebrave asked these excellent prompts and I couldn’t do just one. I answered one of them here with her ask, and here is another one because it was just too good to pass up.
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?” Shiro reads. The title is fantastical. The title of Hogwarts is almost too absurd. The title, the words almost don’t seem real.
And yet as Shiro says them, the words….seem right.
“That’s right,” says the wizard - Professor Coran, as he’d introduced himself. He smiles at Shiro from the other side of the living room where the Professor sits in Shiro’s dad’s chair, holding a delicate cup of tea in Shiro’s mom’s best china. Professor Coran’s clothes are strange and voluminously odd, his mustache as orange as the ink on Shiro’s letter. His letter. Of acceptance, to a - a - “It’s the best school in all of England for young witches and wizards like yourself to come learn how to control their magic. Would you like that, young lad?”
“A school?” Shiro breathes.
“Magic?” his mother asks, weakly. Shiro’s father takes the letter, frowning over it.
“Yes,” Professor Coran says, serious and business-like, though there’s a kind gleam to his eyes. Shiro likes him. “I know this is a lot to take in.”
“Magic isn’t real,” Shiro’s father says, passing the letter back to his wife.
“On the contrary,” Coran says, with a quirk of one bright-orange bushy eyebrow. His gaze has slipped back to Shiro, and the familiar intensity in the Professor’s eyes is almost frightening. Shiro shifts a little in his seat, scratching self-consciously at the scar across his nose. His mother reaches out and takes his hand.
Professor Coran smiles, and the moment passes. Shiro’s not sure why he’s relieved.
“If I may,” Professor Coran begins. He sets his cup of tea carefully on the side-table by the chair, reaching into the pocket of his robes. “Would you like to see a spell, young Shirogane?”
“My friends call me Shiro,” Shiro says, bravely, “and yes, please.”
“Shiro, then,” Coran says, beaming. From his pocket he withdraws a wand - a mythical object Shiro’s only read about in fairytales, only seen once before and not remembered, only an object about to become as familiar to Shiro as his own right hand. A simple, complex item that will utterly change Shiro’s life. “Watch this.”
(taking three-sentence prompts tonight!)
